“You can use VPNs, the click of a button, to make it seem like you’re not in Texas,” Shaffer argued. “You can go through the search engines, you can go through social media, you can access the same content in the ways that kids are likeliest to do.”

Texas lawyer Aaron Nielson argued that the issue of kids accessing porn online has actually just gotten “worse” in the years because Texas has actually been trying less limiting and apparently less efficient ways like material filtering. Now, age confirmation is Texas’ favored service, and stringent analysis should not use to a law that simply asks somebody to reveal ID to see adult material, Nielson argued.

“In our history we have always said kids can’t come and look at this stuff,” Nielson argued. “So it seems not correct to me as a historical matter to say, well actually it’s always been presumptively unconstitutional. … But we’ve done it forever. Strict scrutiny somehow has always been satisfied.”

Like groups taking legal action against, Texas likewise asked the Supreme Court to be really clear when composing assistance for the 5th Circuit ought to the court leave and remand the case. Texas desires justices to restate that simply due to the fact that the case was remanded, that does not suggest the 5th Circuit can’t reinstitute the stay on the initial injunction that was bought following the 5th Circuit’s previous evaluation.

On defense, Shaffer informed SCOTUS that out of “about 20 other laws that by some views may look a lot like Texas'” law, “this is the worst of them.” He explained Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a “hostile regulator who’s saying to adults, you should not be here.”

“I strongly urge this court to stick with strict scrutiny as the applicable standard of review when we’re talking about content-based burdens on speakers,” Shaffer stated.

In a news release, Vera Eidelman, a senior personnel lawyer with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, stated that “efforts to childproof the Internet not just harm everybody’s capability to gain access to details, however typically provide the federal government far excessive freedom to pursue speech it does not like– all while stopping working to really safeguard kids.”